


The Friend

by kanadka



Series: have a holly jao-ly christmas [3]
Category: The Course of Empire - Eric Flint
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Gen, Post-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28287198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/pseuds/kanadka
Summary: Tamt's continuing education on Terra.
Series: have a holly jao-ly christmas [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086407
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Athaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athaia/gifts).



Tamt finds there's really nothing to Caitlin, which helps fuel the logical dichotomy of her. She's small and scrawny, and very much weak, especially when she stands next to Tamt, who overshadows her by a full two heads' height and many hands' breadth, and Tamt's size is not just for show. Any human is tiny in comparison to any Jao, but Caitlin especially so - she reminds Tamt of her haphazard agemate brethren, the rest of whom Tamt had done better than, simply by virtue of her size. The only gift genetics gave her.

So Caitlin's lucky, Tamt feels, to have her as the muscle for backup. Caitlin clearly sorely needs it. And Caitlin's skills are too valuable to waste both for her entire race and for this new human-Jao taif. Caitlin is intermediary; Caitlin is envoy; Caitlin is attache to the once-scion of Pluthrak who is still very much namth camiti. Tamt, meanwhile, is not-much. Tamt understands this; it is a simple fact.

But there have come to be other functions that they serve for one another than protector-and-protected, and this was entirely unexpected. They exchange experiences, also. Last-sun that they met that was not for business, they did something human - they watched what Caitlin had called a film. It was alright, Tamt found - these fictional untrue tales. Humans are ever about their ollnat, their things-that-aren't, their make-believe, their what-might-be. Imagination, Caitlin calls it, and Tamt struggles to understand, because that is just not the way of Jao.

But humans love it, and Tamt has been on Terra long enough to slowly perceive an understanding of it. Long has Tamt imagined a world where she was more important than she was. Where she would be of more important use, even if use is use and it isn't measured by any other metric.

That's why it's so surreal to her that Terra has unfolded in flow to become exactly this state. Concluded is the flow when she and Kopr had been assigned to their outpost and they cursed every sun-up with this wretched sun on this cracked world, crawling with insects, because they knew it was the best they'd ever get with their low status kochan and it was still awful. There is one good part about those memories, and that was the music perceivable from the Binnat association hall. Entrance to which Tamt and Kopr and their ilk were not permitted, but music was a flow all its own that could not be restrained.

"What'd you think of the movie?" Caitlin asks her afterwards. "I know it had a lot of different themes - romance, action, adventure."

In truth, Tamt had paid little attention to the ollnat. It was still easier to pay attention to the lerev, the what-is. "The music they used was ..." Exquisite, enchanting. Moving, flowing. Timesense concluding and expanding in a way that thickened and travelled and sailed and swam before concluding again. "Nice," says Tamt.

Caitlin laughs, derisive but fond. "You've got a way with words, I'll tell you that."

***

The next-sun they meet that is not for business, they do something Jao, and Tamt isn't sure what they would be able to do that Caitlin doesn't know how to do already. She knows that for years Caitlin was monitored by Banle, the Narvo officer that attempted to take her back

But there is much Banle would have refused to teach her, and much that would be of use for someone such as Caitlin to learn. 

"This," explains Tamt, "is the jallat mei." She holds her arms out, heartward farther than windward, and positions her legs with the same separation, where the flow is extended to the feet.

"It's like a martial art?" guesses Caitlin. She's very adept at postures - she always has been, it's been her primary virtue as a human-Jao interpreter - and mimics Tamt readily. She does her best at it but it's almost humourous how these positions show how small she is. And the flow doesn't work.

Assuming that Tamt understands the meaning behind martial art - being an art and not a tool - which isn't necessarily a given because Tamt's always been slow to understand, she says, "Yes. Sort of. Not quite like that, though. You're shorter, so you have to stand wider apart." Caitlin tries it. Still not right. In the end it's just easier for Tamt to kneel down and reposition her legs physically; wrem-fa with a lot less violence (Caitlin had enough of that from Banle, and there's no point to it).

"But that's not how you stood," says Caitlin.

"It helps," explains Tamt, "to recognise that the distance is set by the hands, with respect to your opponent. All other distances are relative. So, since I'm taller -" 

Tamt steps back and traces a flow stream with her hands. Imaginary, ollnat-like, floating in midair. "That's the first movement," she explains. "Your hands are here -" she gestures to the top of the arc - "your feet are here, and everything else -"

"Oh," says Caitlin. "Right, I think I've got it." She twists and turns and repositions until she looks like a version of the arc that's been downsized. The same arc length and flow, just miniature. It looks doll-like and Tamt fights a laugh.

"Don't be the full arc if you don't have the height, only be a part of it," says Tamt. "Not all Jao are my size, and I'm not the same size as the tallest of us, either. But if you only do a part, that part then becomes the whole."

"I get it," says Caitlin, who - given her posture, doesn't quite. But she readjusts and makes a closer facsimile, and three moves later she's even more accurate.

They work together until the flow has concluded. Tamt's timesense gives her the exact point in temporal dimension that Caitlin's muscles tire beyond the point of getting any further use out of them for the day. It's easy to tell, now. They've been close enough that Tamt can stretch her perception to include Caitlin and account for her weird unfuzzy body, all slick skin and oils of it, the minute subtle changes in action-reaction that allow for a measure of time that isn't divided out but perceived at a distance.

If Caitlin had been Jao, Tamt suspects she would have been namth camiti for Kannu, or Hij. Any kochan, really, would be proud to term her their own. How adept, how useful! Not like Tamt ever was.

That's a sour thing to think. But it's so unfair! It's not just that Caitlin can be so much better at being a Jao than Tamt is, when she doesn't even have any whiskers, and the flow of her swimming concludes in barely a few lungfuls of breath.

"You know, you could be namth camiti for our new taif," mentions Tamt. A little ridiculous, maybe, to think of a human as namth camiti. But their whole taif is ridiculous by Jao standards. And Caitlin's familiar enough with Jao terms that she knows what it means, what it implies, and that it's not just a compliment or some honour Tamt is bestowing to try and be kind, it's bare truth.

Caitlin grins. "Oh, really?" She elbows Tamt playfully in the gut. "Only if I get you as a fraghta first."

Tamt as a fraghta - a position for the venerable, for the old, for the wise, when she's barely scratched a single service bar into her wide cheek - what ridiculousness! She barks a laugh, and Caitlin laughs too. Tamt isn't high status and even if she had the experience, they'd never allow it - Tamt doesn't come from a noble genetic line or the best marriage-group from Kannu or even the nicest, freshest pools on Kindre, her home world. Though... maybe that doesn't matter on Terra.

Anyway, Caitlin isn't Jao, and never will be, like Tamt isn't human, and never will be, and there may be things they can only approximate in their quest for common ground. It's a little sad to come so far a distance and still have so far to go. Maybe that's not the tragedy it sometimes feels like.

"Ah," Tamt sighs. "Not fraghta, I think, not ever. Just friend." She holds herself in pleased-relaxed and smiles in the way that Caitlin has shown her how.


End file.
